14 Weeks- The Dog Walk

Oct 14, 2004 | Stitch's Story

Wheee! Our new agility contact trainer arrived!


We spend lunch on the trainer. This is a 4X4′ platform about 3′ high, with a 4X8 sheet of plywood forming a ramp off one side, and a 14″ wide plank forming a ramp off the other side. Yellow contact zones painted at the bottom of both ramps. I start by standing with my toes tucked under the big ramp, facing the ramp. Stitch wants to come find my eyes (aha, our first real use for the Get Lost game!) but this BOARD is in the way. She doesn’t really trust it enough to get on it, but she REALLY wants to find my face, so she puts her front feet on it, c/t. And again, and again, and pretty soon I’m tossing the treats onto the ramp, where they roll down, and sometimes she wants to catch them before they hit the bottom, and once in a while a treat will get stuck half-way down the ramp, and before she knows it, she’s on the platform at the top. I click her there a couple of times, then turn my body so she starts coming down the ramp. Up and down, up and down, Pretty soon it’s no big deal.

Then I come around to the small ramp side. She jumps off the platform once, so I start planting kibbles on the ramp to make sure she goes up it, then planting them to make sure she comes down it as well. OK, she’s got it. She starts (as you can see) running the ramps to get to the platform. How often do you get to play Queen Of The Universe and get paid for it at the same time? This is a GREAT game!